this was forwarded to me and i feel compelled to pass it on. -moby It has been five days since the election. In that time, accounts of voter fraud and malfunctioning voting machines have flooded into local newspapers in Ohio, to public-interest groups, universities and weblogs.

This message is an overview of those reports.

The stories are summarized here, with links to the original publications. After seeing this evidence -- and there is more still to be rounded up -- I am no longer convinced that Bush won the election. I hope you will read through these summaries, click on the links to the original stories, and come to your own conclusions.

I've included all the accounts of election tampering that I'm aware of, but have not done a broad search. This is only what I've learned in the past five days.

My education was provided by a group of concerned journalists who posted reports to a chat list. This is a compilation of their research.

I believe there is enough evidence to suggest that the electorate may have actually chosen Kerry on Tuesday. We don't know for sure -- we can't know till there is a recount. Or, if that's not possible because of electronic voting machines, until the election is held over in Ohio and Florida.

Bush has not yet been chosen by the Electoral College. The Electors meet and vote on Dec. 13. We need to raise questions about the results -- and raise them loudly -- to get an investigation launched before that date.

So far, the mainstream media in not picking up the story. They moved very slowly after the 2000 election.

Here are the accounts of election tampering from four states, plus reports on multi-state problems. (Please note: some of the newspaper links may expire soon. You may want to print out the stories so that later on, you don't have to buy them from the newspapers' archives.)

FLORIDA: The most troubling news comes out of Florida. Throughout most of the state, new electronic voting machines were in use. These machines -- many manufactured by a company called Diebold -- are controversial because they don't leave a paper trail. There is no way to double-check the results. The final Florida tallies on Diebold machines from Tuesday are literally unbelievable.

In 29 counties where Diebold machines (an optical scanner) were used to count the ballots, large majorities of voters were registered Democrats.

But the final results gave all the counties to Bush, sometimes by huge margins. The individual county data shows how unlikely the machine results were. For instance: In Calhoun County, 82% of registered voters are Democrats. But Diebold machines said 63% of the county voted for Bush.

In Lafayette County, 83% of voters are Democrats, but Diebold said 74% of the county voted for Bush.

In Liberty County, 88% of voters are Democrats, but Diebold said 64% voted for Bush.

In Washington County, 67% of voters are Democrats, but Diebold said 71% voted for Bush.

This same pattern appears in the results for 29 COUNTIES in Florida. In every one of those counties, the Diebold Optical Scanner produced the results. The Optical Scanner has been called the voting machine that is most susceptible to tampering. Many of you have been watching elections closely for years. Do you believe that in 29 Florida counties in which Democrats were in the majority -- in some cases with 4 out of 5 registered voters being Democrats -- they all voted strongly for Bush?

Here are the links. You can find the voter registration/final result data here:

http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm

You can find a story analyzing these results here:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1106-30.htm

You can read about electronic voting machines -- an untested phenomenon in American elections, here:

http://www.moderateindependent.com/v2i21thoreau.htm

THE OTHER PROBLEM IN FLORIDA:

In 6 counties -- again, they were all using electronic machines -- more votes for President were recorded than there were actual voters in the counties. Altogether, these six counties reported 188,885 more votes for President than there are voters living there. Right now, no one knows whether those extra 188,000 votes were cast for Bush or for Kerry. But Bush won the state of Florida by a 5% margin -- contrary to what all the polls were showing only days earlier.

In Glades County: 2,443 votes for Bush / 1,718 votes for Kerry / 27 votes for Other. Those add up to 4,188. But the machines recorded the official turnout as 3,446. That adds up to 742 more votes than voters.

In Highlands County: 25,874 for Bush / 15,346 for Kerry / 271 for Other. Official Turnout: 33,996. That adds up to 7,495 more votes than voters.

In Miami-Dade County: 358,613 for Bush / 406,099 for Kerry / 3,841 for Other. Official Turnout 716,574. That adds up to 51,979 more votes than voters.

In Osceola County: 43,108 for Bush / 38,617 for Kerry / 453 for Other. Official Turnout 63589. That adds up to 18,589 more votes than voters.

In Palm Beach County: 211,894 for Bush / 327,698 for Kerry / 3,243 for Other. Official Turnout: 452,061. That adds up to 90,774 more votes than voters.

In Volusia County: 111,544 for Bush / 115,319 for Kerry / 1,495 for Other. Official Turnout: 209,052. That adds up to 19,306 more votes than voters.

Use this link to get to the data:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/5/18466/2846

STILL MORE PROBLEMS IN FLORIDA

This account comes from partisans. Four Kerry volunteers working in Broward County sent a letter detailing election tampering to one of the reporters on our chat list. All four signed it and included their email addresses. They report a wide, disturbing range of problems, from voters saying their electronic machines malfunctioned, poll workers denied them assistance, to police putting up roadblocks on the routes to polling places, and so on. The entire text of the letter, along with the signatures, appears at the bottom of this letter.

OHIO

In Ohio, there were problems in four counties and one city. In Howard County, a judge ruled on Election Day that everyone standing in line to vote at 7:30 p.m. had to eventually be allowed inside. The order said the ruling was good for the day of Nov. 2. (You can view the order at the website below.) But maybe it didn't occur to the judge that everybody might not make it inside by midnight. At the stroke of midnight, when the calendar legally clicked over to Nov. 3, Republican Ken Blackwell, the secretary of state, told all the waiting voters to go home. His workers gave them paper ballots (i.e., provisional ballots), told them to fill them out and bring them back later. It was an improvised move that undercut the intent of the judge's ruling, and created chaos. Many people in Howard County still haven't turned in those ballots because they don't know where to take them or what the deadline is. The only kind of ballot in a federal election that people can legally take home, fill out and turn in later is an absentee ballot, and those are marked as such. They're marked with clear rules concerning deadlines, postmarking, and so on. So an uncounted number of people in Howard County--estimated in the thousands-- couldn't get in and were turned away with what may be ruled an illegal procedure. The vast majority of those votes wre expected to go to Kerry based on the heavily Democratic population of Howard County. The Democrats have filed a lawsuit. You can click on the Ohio State University law school website to read about it: http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:pKbOJwHH7OMJ:moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/analysis/110304b.htm+Ohio+7:30+election+Blackwell+waiting+line&hl=en&start=4&lr=lang_en

Meanwhile, in Warren County, election officials locked the doors to the County building and refused to allow bi-partisan observers to watch the vote-count. They also denied access to the AP reporter (it is standard procedure for the AP to observe vote-counting in counties all over the country.) The Sheriff of the county said he did it for "homeland security" reasons. He never explained or specified what the security concerns were. Here is the link to the story in the Cincinnati Enquirer: http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/11/05/loc_warrenvote05.html

Meanwhile, in a Columbus suburb called Gahanna, the same problem showed up with electronic machines that we saw in Florida: more votes were cast than there were voters to cast them. In this case, however, the problem was investigated and the extra 3,893 votes were shown to have been erroneously tallied for Bush. Here is the link to the story on the Ohio Network News: http://www.onnnews.com/Global/story.asp?S=2524952

Meanwhile, in Mahoning and Mercer Counties, electronic machines again malfunctioned, but the effect that had on the vote count is not clear. The machines had to be re-set, and at one point showed votes of "negative 25 million," according to the head of the local board of elections. Here is the story from the local Youngstown paper, called the Vindicator: http://www.vindy.com/basic/news/281829446390855.php

There is even more compelling data to support this. The results are now in for most precincts in the 17 key states in which the dems actively campaigned. We start with absolutely solid data. If you calculate, using the cash payments made by union agents and dem precinct captains for each vote cast by designated individuals (and, some were paid for having cast as many as 20 LEGAL votes), the number of votes for Kerry exceeds the number of votes received by Bush. This proves that the Republicans stole the election.

11
posted on 11/11/2004 11:02:56 AM PST
by Tacis
(Kerry - You Can't Make A Silk Purse Out Of A Lazy, Lying, Elitist Scumbag!)

For instance: In Calhoun County, 82% of registered voters are Democrats. But Diebold machines said 63% of the county voted for Bush. In Lafayette County, 83% of voters are Democrats, but Diebold said 74% of the county voted for Bush. In Liberty County, 88% of voters are Democrats, but Diebold said 64% voted for Bush. In Washington County, 67% of voters are Democrats, but Diebold said 71% voted for Bush.

A simple Google search would have shown Moby that President Bush won each of those counties in 2000 as well. But, I guess simple is still too complicated for idiot lefties who live in denial!

21
posted on 11/11/2004 11:22:10 AM PST
by HenryLeeII
("How do you ask a goose to be the last goose to die for a shameless political stunt?" -Tony in Ohio)

First of all, the author/and/or poster don't appear to know the difference between an optical scanning voting machine and an electronic voting machine. The optical scanning voting machine reads a paper ballot so, DUHHHH, there is a paper trail. There is also credible discussion that optical scanning machines are the most reliable, both in technology and because of the back-up ballots.

Secondly, as has been required to post on this site far too often, yes Virginaia, people in rural Southern counties register as Democrats and vote Republican at the top of the ticket, as these counties have been doing for years. I was stunned, as a loyal young Republican, to find that my own parents had been registered Democrats for years. Why do we keep having to listen to this nonsense. This argument is basically that W won counties that Bush and Bush have won previously, but by a bigger margin than in 2000, so theirs somethingwrong. By this logic, New Hamshire was stolen because Bush did worse than 4 years ago. That's the whole point, guys, Bush did better in Florida than he did in 2000, and worse in New Hampshire. It's called campaiging, It's why we have elections every four years instead of just re-ratifying previous results. Get used to it.

Next, Osceola county reports 82,195 voters on their wepage and 82,178 on the SofS webpage. I don't see the 63,000 number anywhere, except (approximately) as the number of votes on down-ballot races. Remember, even the skeptical media now admit that people (even some Freepers) spun themselves into a corkscrew over 90,000+ "overvotes" in Cuyahoga County, Ohio that didn't really exist because nobody took the time to READ and UNDERSTAND how the data were displayed on the webpage.

Finally, I know in the case of the South Florida counties, and I suspect in the case of the Dixicrat counties, the elections offcials are mostly Democrats.

Excuse me, sir. I have been looking for a place to ask a question and hope you'll pardon the interjection.

Whatever happened to disenfranchisement? A million blacks not allowed to vote in the 2000 election, etc. Thousands of Dem lawyers posted all over FLA waiting to jump on a first complaint and so on. Has there been ONE report of disenfranchisment? If it didn't happen anywhere, shouldn't that be news?

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